Adventures In Solitude
by saxgirl42
Summary: Naruto's mind was blank, a knee-jerk reaction to emotional trauma that he had practiced far too many times since his initiation into the ANBU: Shinobi did not show emotion.


**A/N: **Because it has been a very long time since I have written anything in the Naruto fandom, and because my… _distaste_ with some of the latest chapters (424 in particular) requires that I make myself feel better. Which is also why I put a certain character in for the secondary character filter...

For those of you who have not been reading the manga, be forewarned: there are itty bitty hints of spoilers in here. It's set in a "what-if," near-future-ish semi-AU (yeah, that's specific), so there are references to things that have happened in recent chapters. They are by no means drastic, but they are there. Also, Naruto and Co. are in ANBU for this. Because I have been looking for an excuse to write an ANBU fic for_ever_. So if that bothers you, deal, people. I like it.

Also, I've been listening to the New Pornographers and was inspired by the absolutely gorgeous song "Adventures in Solitude." It's (obviously) where I got the title for this story. I think you should check it out. Like, yesterday. XD

That's all! Enjoy, and please leave a review!

**Disclaimer:** "Naruto" belongs to Masashi Kishimoto.

o-o-o

**Adventures in Solitude**

Naruto slumped to the ground for the sixth time since crossing the border into the Land of Fire, eyes squeezed shut and clutching his heaving chest. His heart stuttered painfully, sending shots of agony through his torso and bringing a grimace to his bloody face.

_I overdid it_, he thought morbidly. _This is it. I'm gonna die before I even get back to the village._

But the pain passed as quickly as it had come and he breathed a sigh of relief, leaning down until his forehead touched the cool grass. The droplets of early morning dew soaked his spiky hair and headband, but it felt wonderful. He could stay like this forever. He was so tired…

"Naruto."

That was funny. It sounded like someone was calling his name, but who would be out in the woods at this hour? It was his imagination, no doubt. He could go back to sleep…

"Naruto!"

They sounded really insistent, and they were getting closer. Naruto was sure he had heard that tone of voice before. Something told him it did not bode well.

"Naruto, _please_ get up!"

Please? Why ask so nicely? And why did they sound so desperate, he was just sleeping. It wasn't like he was dead. He opened his eyes – just to make sure – and found himself staring into cold, soft grass. No, not dead then. Not like the others. Not like…

Pain. Excruciating, shooting pain.

Naruto cried out and curled in upon himself on the ground, hands automatically going to his chest once more. In an instant there was someone beside him, turning him gently but forcefully onto his back. Small hands pried his claw-like fingers from the fabric of his uniform and laid them to the side. Then the hands were on his chest, glowing warmly, and the pain was receding.

"Naruto? Can you hear me?"

"Yeah. That feels great, Sakura," Naruto rasped, his eyes closed in blissful release. He heard the girl laugh humorlessly, but her voice was less frantic when she spoke again.

"Do you think you can get up?" she asked, her hands leaving his chest as she stood.

"No way to know unless I try." Naruto opened his eyes slowly and took the proffered hand, rising to his feet less than gracefully. Upon standing he teetered and almost fell, but Sakura grabbed him around the waist, supporting his weight easily even though he was a few inches taller.

"Come on," Sakura said, starting to lead him through the brush. "The Hokage wants to see you about the mission."

"Success," Naruto mumbled automatically. Sakura glanced at him, but his eyes were hidden by his too-long bangs.

"Naruto," she said softly, "where is the rest of your squad?" Naruto turned away from her and said nothing. Sakura closed her eyes. "I see."

Naruto just stared at his bloody right hand, hanging limply at his side, as Sakura dragged him along like he was nothing but dead weight. He may as well have been. His mind was blank, a knee-jerk reaction to emotional trauma that he had practiced far too many times since his initiation into the ANBU. Shinobi did not show emotion, so he could not allow himself to be outwardly affected by the deaths of his entire squad. Even though that squad had contained three of his oldest friends.

His heart lurched painfully in his chest and he gasped raggedly, collapsing to his knees and pulling Sakura with him. She placed a hand on his chest and one on his back, already healing and telling him to breathe evenly, but Naruto barely heard her.

_I deserve this_, was all he could think. _I deserve this and so much more for letting them die._

He could faintly hear Sakura calling out to him, telling him to stay with her, but the world was spinning and Naruto could still hear the voices of his teammates, yelling for him to complete the job and leave them. Naruto shut his eyes tightly and tried to shut out the voices, as well, but all he could hear was their assurances that they would be all right and that he had to go on without them.

They had not been all right. But he had left them anyway.

Naruto felt the ground rush up to meet him, heard Sakura calling his name and pushing on his chest, trying to get him to draw breath. He could feel his heart fluttering weakly and knew that he had finally overdone it. Six tails was one too many…

But seeing them lying there, broken, bleeding, beyond his reach… it had pushed him over the edge.

Shinobi did not show emotion.

But the Kyuubi sure as hell did.

Warm lips suddenly covered his and Naruto felt his lungs swell with sweet air. He breathed in deeply and came up coughing and gasping, almost colliding heads with a pale Sakura. She watched him warily.

"Are you all right now?" she asked. Naruto nodded and swallowed dryly, holding out his hand to be helped to his feet again. Sakura remained kneeling and motionless, her hands clenched into fists on her thighs. "We can rest for a minute," she said. Naruto let his hand drop and he fell back onto the dewy grass, closing his eyes.

"Fine."

The quiet of the forest was stifling. The rising sun cast playful shadows through the trees and onto his face, creating dancing patterns on his eyelids. The patterns morphed into faces, then bodies, then blood, and then everything went red, it was all so red…

Naruto scrunched his eyes to block out all the sunlight, but the faces still haunted him. His comrades… he could see them all.

Neji had been the first. Pale eyes open wide and caught forever in an expression of surprise and pain, dark hair splayed out around his broken, bloodied body, and the bruised and twisted skin on his neck the only evidence of the strangulation that had killed him.

Shikamaru had been nearby, face down in a slowly spreading pool of gore, impaled on his own sword. His left hand, rigid in death, still clutched a wickedly long kunai that would never be used.

And then there was their captain, whom the Hokage had personally requested to lead the mission…

Naruto opened his eyes and glanced over at Sakura, who had shifted so that she now sat with her back to him, her knees drawn up to her chin. He knew what she was thinking, but what could he say to make her feel better?

"He –" Naruto started, but his voice only came out as a croak. He cleared his throat and continued. "He was the one who took out the main target." Sakura turned to him, her eyes glistening but no tears upon her cheeks.

"What?" she asked.

"Kakashi-sensei," Naruto said, his voice gentler now. "He took out the main target before he… before he was killed." Sakura frowned.

"But I thought _you_ –"

"My job was to retrieve this." Naruto pulled a worn scroll out of a pocket at his side. Sakura's eyes widened in understanding.

"Oh," was all she could say. She looked down and away from him, closing her eyes for a moment, then abruptly got to her feet and held her hand out, just as she had before. "Ready?"

"Yeah."

The pair travelled for a few miles without any problems. The silence began to nag at Naruto again, and he was still convinced that he could hear the voices of his squad. Instead of comforting him, it made him feel alone, even though he knew Sakura was at his side the whole time. He tried ignoring them, tried shoving their presence from his mind, but each time he managed to successfully clear his thoughts, a sharp pain would lance through his heart and he would be forced to start again.

Each time the pain came, Sakura would place calm hands upon him and coax it away, but for some reason she never asked why he was experiencing the palpitations. Maybe she suspected that it was the stress of being consumed by the Kyuubi. After all, she had treated him for almost the same thing after Pain's attack on Konoha.

"_Naruto!_"

Naruto winced and paused mid-step. Sakura stopped, as well, casting him a questioning look. He shook his head at her minutely, not willing to explain yet that he was hearing his deceased squad's voices in his head.

But just then it had sounded like Kakashi was standing right beside him. Despite everything, Naruto couldn't help but glance around semi-hopefully. The woods remained silent and unmoving.

"Is everything all right?" Sakura asked, her blue eyes concerned. Naruto was about to nod, but then he stopped, staring at the kunoichi's face.

Blue eyes.

Sakura didn't have blue eyes.

Before this fact could properly register, an excruciating shot of pain tore through his chest. He let out a scream of pure agony and fell immediately to his knees. _Kami_, it felt like his chest was being ripped apart! Another explosion of pain jolted his heart and he could feel his vision starting to tunnel. He couldn't breathe, it was suffocating, but still he heard the voices. It seemed like they were getting louder, more insistent. Naruto vaguely wondered if this was what dying felt like before more pain erupted in his chest and he thought he felt his heart burst.

A warm, trickling sensation started behind his eyes and seemed to spread through his brain, and his vision began to fade. The woods around him became a blur of green and then a dusty red before fading altogether into blackness. He couldn't see or hear Sakura anymore and wondered if she was even there. He still couldn't breathe, but he could feel himself gasping desperately, searching for oxygen that just wasn't there.

In a flash, the darkness disappeared and air swept into his lungs. Naruto coughed and retched and flipped onto his side to empty his stomach, the acidic bile scorching its way up his throat before he had even started to breathe properly. Strong hands supported him as he heaved, but something wasn't right.

Something had changed.

Naruto opened his eyes and blinked blearily at the ground beneath him, still coughing and spitting weakly. It was rough, brown, hard-packed dirt. He clenched his fist into the ground to make sure he wasn't seeing things and felt the grains of soil lodge beneath his fingernails. It felt real enough, but where had the grass gone?

"Are you all right?"

Naruto froze. That voice… that voice shouldn't be here. It shouldn't be so clear, and it should definitely not be right next to him. Naruto lifted his face a bit and something tickled his left cheek. Out of the corner of his eyes he saw a veil of long brown hair that he was positive was not supposed to be there. The last time he had seen that hair it had been soaked in blood…

"Kakashi," the voice called, sounding concerned. The strong hands that had supported Naruto while he was vomiting tightened around his shoulders, and Naruto glanced at them. They were bloody, dirtied, and too large to be a female's hands; they were _not_ Sakura's hands.

"Neji…?" Naruto whispered, still hesitant to believe. The hands guided him into a seated position, and Naruto found himself staring into the Hyuuga's pale eyes, bright with worry and very much alive.

"Can you hear me?" the jounin asked, leaning in and gently pulling down Naruto's eyelids, checking for something that the other couldn't yet fathom. Naruto was speechless. He knew he was gaping, knew he should nod or reply or do _something_, but Neji was alive. Alive and whole and apparently worried about him. Neji pulled away and frowned at the younger man, gripping his shoulders tightly. "_Naruto_," he said forcefully.

"You're alive," Naruto blurted. Neji stared at him for a second, then grinned and sat back on his heels.

"He should be all right now," he called to someone behind Naruto. The blond took the opportunity to look around for the first time.

He was back in the courtyard of the manor his squad had been ordered to infiltrate, and scattered throughout the courtyard were the dead bodies of the guards they had been forced to kill. Squatting beside one of the bodies, cleaning his long kunai, was Shikamaru, sporting no worse wounds than a scratch on his cheek. He glanced over at Naruto and gave a lopsided smile, tipping his ANBU mask jokingly.

"Good to have you back," he called.

"What happened?" Naruto asked, completely baffled.

"A trap." Naruto jumped and looked behind him to see Kakashi striding their direction, fox-mask askew and uniform slightly bloodstained but definitely alive and well.

A slightly strangled "Huh?" was all that Naruto could manage. He was unable to look away from his captain, not quite willing to believe that the man was alive.

Alive. Shikamaru, Neji, Kakashi… they were all alive. But how was that possible? He had been so sure…

"A trap," Kakashi repeated, kneeling in front of Naruto and doing his own quick check of the blond's eyes. "Somehow one of the shinobi stationed here knew you were coming so they set up a genjutsu trap to unleash the Kyuubi. They planted images in your mind in order to anger you and activate the transformation."

"So… what I saw was all genjutsu?" Naruto asked.

"Yes," Kakashi said. "How's your heart? I had to give you a few good jolts to keep it beating through the stress of transformation."

"That was you?" Naruto asked, resting a hand on his dully-aching chest. Kakashi nodded solemnly. Naruto looked down. So the whole thing really had been an illusion. The death of his comrades, his helpless stumbling through the forest, the heart pain, Sakura… But it had seemed so real! He could still picture Neji's unseeing eyes, the spreading crimson pool of Shikamaru's blood, and Kakashi…

"Naruto."

Naruto reluctantly met his captain's mismatched gaze. The jounin cocked an eyebrow.

"Your heart?"

"It's fine," Naruto said quickly, letting his hand drop into his lap. "Did you complete the mission?"

"Not yet," Shikamaru said, standing and sheathing his kunai in a smooth motion. "We still need the scroll." Naruto frowned.

"But everyone's dead," he said, his mind shifting easily back into mission-mode. "Why haven't you gotten it already?"

"We were a bit more worried about you," Neji said dryly, rising to his feet and stretching languorously. Naruto opened his mouth to question again but Kakashi spoke up before he could.

"The stress of the partial transformation into the Kyuubi was wreaking hell on your body, especially your heart," he explained, getting to his feet, as well. "You even stopped breathing at one point. Neji had to bring you back." Naruto flushed slightly, recalling the warm lips he had been so convinced were Sakura's, and glanced at the Hyuuga, who merely shrugged.

"We thought we'd lost you," he said simply.

"Oh." Naruto was slightly stunned. While he had been tricked into thinking he had lost his team, _he_ had been the one actually dying. And apparently his squad had managed to bring him back. If that wasn't ironic...

"I'll grab the scroll so we can go," Shikamaru sighed, breaking the silence. Kakashi nodded his consent and the younger man sprinted into the manor.

"Cover him, Neji," Kakashi said. The Hyuuga disappeared with a quick nod, leaving Naruto alone with his once-sensei.

"How did you stop it?" Naruto asked quietly. He knew Kakashi would understand what he was referring to; the jounin had been worrying about the release of the Kyuubi even longer than Naruto had.

"I used a sealing jutsu. It's basic, but it will hold for a while. I didn't have much time."

"And the genjutsu?" Naruto asked, already knowing the answer.

"I used the Sharingan."

Naruto looked down at the ground and absently drew a little pattern in the dirt, pointedly avoiding Kakashi's gaze.

"Are _you_ okay?" he asked.

"I'll live," Kakashi said, and Naruto could hear the smile in his voice. He looked up to see the man holding out a hand to him, just as the Sakura-illusion had done. Naruto grasped it and was a little surprised when Kakashi tugged him up into a hug, but he didn't question it. It was far too nice to lean into the other ninja's firm embrace and be fully reassured that he was _alive_, and that the whole debacle had been merely an illusion.

"Welcome back," Kakashi murmured. Naruto smiled and closed his eyes.

"You too."

_Less than forget, but more than begun_

_These adventures in solitude never done_

_To the names of our wounds_

_We send the same blood back from the wars_

_We thought we lost you_

_Welcome back_

_We thought we lost you_

_It will all come back_

o-o-o


End file.
